Arnold Schwarzenegger 'to star in Western'

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will return to Hollywood
despite a damaging sex scandal, an industry news site has reported.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Photo: AFP

10:27AM BST 12 Jul 2011

Two months after putting his Hollywood return on hold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to start shooting the Western movie The Last Stand in September, a film industry source said Monday.

The news comes less than a fortnight after his wife Maria Shriver annnounced she would file for a divorce.

"It's an old-fashioned Western specifically designed for a 63 year-old broken-down guy with a moral decision...We always needed an iconic figure for it," an unnamed movie executive told industry website Deadline Hollywood on Monday.

Deadline Hollywood first reported the story, and Schwarzenegger's participation was also confirmed by Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Representatives for the former Terminator star declined comment on the reports, as did a spokesman for the Lionsgate film studio that is behind the movie.

But an industry source who asked to remain anonymous confirmed to Reuters that the movie was going ahead as planned with Schwarzenegger in the lead role.

Schwarzenegger said in May that he was halting discussions for a new Terminator movie and all other Hollywood projects in order to focus on personal matters following an admission that he fathered a secret child 13 years ago with his family's housekeeper.

The Last Stand, to be directed by South Korea's Jee-woon Kim is expected to be released in 2012.

Before the housekeeper scandal broke in May, Schwarzenegger was also working on a movie called Cry Macho and had announced plans to voice a superhero with a double life in an animated TV comic book style series called The Governator.

Production on The Governator was halted and Cry Macho has been put on hold for the time being.

Schwarzenegger was California governor for seven years until his second term ended in January. He was last seen on screen in a cameo role in the 2010 action movie The Expendables.